'Head-butt': Gregor Townsend has say on South Africa-Scotland flashpoint

The replacement forward caught Scott Cummings in what appeared to be a head-on-head collision in the first minute of the second half. Pierre Brousset, the French referee, deemed the incident worthy of a sin-binning and Dixon returned to the fray after 10 minutes on the sidelines.

Townsend indicated after the game that he felt a stiffer punishment would have been more appropriate.

“Yeah, it looked like a head-on-head collision,” said the Scotland head coach. “I heard that it was [deemed to be] a glancing blow, so I was obviously disappointed that a head-butt, which is what it looked like from our case, was viewed that way.

“I think we understood going into this game that not all the calls would be in our favour, and the players had to adjust to that, and they did in the main. But I think we also have to look at ourselves, and our discipline at times just gave South Africa a couple of easy inroads into that second half, where we put so much effort into creating opportunities.”

‘A sloppy 10 minutes’

Scotland matched the world champions for large parts of a breathless match in Pretoria. They came back from 14-0 down to go in at the break level at 14-14 thanks to tries from Matt Fagerson and Kyle Rowe. The Scots then shipped three tries in a crucial 10-minute spell in the mid-point of the second period to fall 35-14 behind but again came storming back. Two quick scores, from Josh Bayliss and Ben White, cut South Africa’s lead to seven points and a comeback looked to be on the cards. But Jess Kriel’s scored the Boks’ sixth try in the 77th minute to seal the win.

“I think there's a mixture of emotions,” said Townsend. “There's obviously frustration that we didn't do enough to win the game. That's what we set out to do in terms of our training week, our game plan, the belief we had in our players that we could achieve that. And I think we created enough to win the game.

“But we didn't build on that end of the first half and begin the second half with enough points. And we made it hard for ourselves. I don't know, just a sloppy five, ten minutes. But we did come back. We got back to seven points and I firmly believe we would have kicked on and won because when we had the ball, we were making breaks. So yeah, a mixture of frustration and pride.

“I think we'll analyse this game knowing that we are a team that can take on anybody in the world. But we've just got to be more clinical if we get this chance again against a team like South Africa.”

Scotland, who beat Argentina away last weekend in their opening Nations Championship fixture, will round off their summer programme against Fiji at Murrayfield next Saturday.